


About Him

by Valethra



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Really Dorky, introspective, mondo's thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:50:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9178396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valethra/pseuds/Valethra
Summary: Kiyotaka Ishimaru is alive, and he makes it painfully obvious that you had no idea what that meant until you met him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T solely because Mondo swears even in his own head.

You were never supposed to feel like this.

You're Mondo Oowada. You're a goddamned gang leader. The flag of the Crazy Diamonds is emblazoned on your jacket and on your soul. You're the biggest and baddest teenager around. You'd strike any man who called you a wuss, pummel any man who accused you of being too soft. Or at least, that's what you _would have done_ before you met that damned hall monitor, that infernal prefect.

 _Everything_ was different before you met Kiyotaka Ishimaru.

You saw no problem with becoming friends with him. After all, the man had earned your respect, had proven to be a formidable opponent in battle and had shown that he was not afraid of you, that he would not back down because you yelled or threw punches. You respected that. Hell, you probably needed that. The friendship was not the problem.

The problem was that after months of being friends, you went and did the dumbest thing you've ever done, something that's kept you up at night and driven you to the point of weeping silently into your hands alone in the bathroom of your dorm. Something that's cost men their lives, something that regularly drives people to the point of insanity.

_You went and fell in love with him._

You've spent your entire life believing yourself to be straight, as most people generally do. You've asked out girl after girl and faced rejection after rejection, and at first you tried to convince yourself that that's all this was, that you were simply fed up with women. And then you thought about it, and you realized that you can't remember the names or the faces of any of those girls.

You remember your brother's assembly of beautiful women, and how you admired their beauty but never desired it for yourself, never felt any envy. No, the only thing you had succumbed to was the _pressure_ , the teasing of the other bikers who asked you over and over again when you planned on getting a girl for yourself.

You realize now that you've probably _always_ been gay, and accepting that is one of the hardest things you've ever had to do.

Now that you have accepted it, though, it has yet to bring you any peace. If anything, it has made things more difficult. Now, you notice when your friends make derisive comments, and when the media portrays you as some kind of pervert or animal. You had always been aware of those things, but you had never attributed them to yourself, and had therefore been able to turn a blind eye.

It's different now. Now, it hurts. It _hurts_.

It hurts when your friends talk about girls and assume you to be part of the conversation. It hurts when the girls talk about getting married in the future and you remember that you _can't_ , that you may very well _never_ be allowed to marry the person you love. Not in your country, anyway.

It hurt the most when Kiyotaka said that his father wanted him to marry into a wealthy family, and that he would probably have to marry some woman he didn't love, and you thought for a brief second that you recognized the kind of pain that flashed through his eyes as the same pain you've been swallowing for the past few months.

 _Taka_.

You don't even know what it is about him that you like so much. He's loud, he's brash, he's obnoxious. He's a stickler for the rules. He's a hardass, an unapologetic teacher's pet. He's never so much as loitered.

None of that is true. You know exactly what you love about him and why, because you spend hours staring at your ceiling and recounting the ways you love him and every subtle movement he makes when he thinks no one is looking. You also know that what other people assume about him isn't true.

You see the way they pick on him, and you want to pound them into the dirt, but Kiyotaka always stops you. He knows that you won't do it if he tells you not to, and that pisses you off sometimes, but he isn't wrong. You're not used to wanting to protect people, but all you want to do is hold him in your arms and whisper into his ears that it will all be okay, that the things those people say don't matter, and then you realize that, for the most part, he already knows that. He doesn't need you to shield him the way you sometimes think he does.

Those kids hate him because he does his job and he does it well. They call him a hardass and a goody-two-shoes and accuse him of being arrogant and way too serious. They're wrong. Kiyotaka does not reprimand because he thinks he's better than anyone else. He does it because he genuinely cares, because he values law and order and respect for one's fellow man. He does it because he _believes_ , even in a vagabond ruffian like you. So you let him do his job, and you put up with his strict tendencies, and you even accept the detention slips he occasionally writes you (because rules are rules, and Kiyotaka Ishimaru is not one to make exceptions for people he likes).

You walk him to his dorm at the end of the school day on most afternoons, and to his home when you're off on holiday or for the weekend or for whatever other occasion. Kiyotaka talks a lot during this time. He's talkative and excitable in general, but right after the end of a school day he's thrilled, enthralled with the new information he's absorbed and how he plans to implement it. Normally you'd be annoyed by that sort of thing, but then his face lights up like the sun as he chatters on about some historical figure and you can't find it in yourself to even feign annoyance, and you listen even though you only understand about a third of it.

He always gets to talking about the future at some point. He's not secretive about his dream of becoming prime minister, though not everyone knows his motivations. He uses you as a sort of test subject, and he tells you about what he plans to do once he reaches office. He never says "if", always "when", and it seems appropriate somehow. Kiyotaka prattles on about political science and the world he will help create, the change he hopes to inspire, and you find yourself smiling softly as you look at the determined crease in his brow.

Kiyotaka smiles at you when he's finished, and his eyes sparkle. He's not looking directly at you, but perhaps somewhere above your head or behind your eyes, and it's there that he can see exactly what kind of a world he's describing, and you can see the image of it reflected in those ruby irises. He expresses it in childlike wonder, in toothy lopsided grins where his brows furrow so close together that there's hardly any space left between them, and when he smiles like that you can't help but believe that he's going to be everything he says he is, no matter the obstacle.

You usually send him off then, and he shouts over his shoulder when he plans to see you next before immediately starting his after-school cram session.

He's studying beside you now, and you take the opportunity to look at him while his attention is held by his math book. Other people think he's a bit odd-looking, but you think he's insanely attractive, that he's too cute for you to describe without sounding like an idiot. You're very biased in this regard.

You love his spiky black hair. It looks like it would be rigid or perhaps even crunchy, but it's soft and well-kept. His pale skin is smooth, and his body is surprisingly toned beneath the crisp lines of his uniform. You love those eyes most of all, the way they pierce right through you and warm your soul. His eyebrows are unusually thick, and you can't deny that, but they've grown on you over time. They suit his face, make him look downright handsome, when he isn't drawing them so close together.

He's several inches shorter than you. Some people would describe him as small, even if only in the context of comparison, but you know that he isn't. He's big— he's _enormous_. His spirit is a giant of untold proportions, a level of love and sincerity and compassion and drive that someone as tiny as you can hardly fathom, and you wonder how it all fits into that little head, how it's all contained behind those fiery eyes. You wonder constantly where he stores it all, and you figure it must be in that oversized heart of his, the one that's always beating a little too fast and barely fits in his chest cavity for the sheer amount of passion he holds in there.

You realize you aren't really thinking about appearances any more, but that doesn't stop you.

He cries a lot. He yells almost all of the time. He blushes, sometimes, but he tends to hide that. It isn't professional. At first you thought he was an angry kid, but he isn't. He's just intense. Kiyotaka is not angry, he is _furious_. He is not sad, he is _mournful_. He is not happy, he is _jubilant_. His heart is one that operates beyond its physical capacity at all times, and it's no wonder his body reacts accordingly. He is more human than most humans dare to be.

At first you thought he talked too much, that he said everything that popped into his head without putting any thought into it, and you quickly realized that you were wrong. What he says aloud is only the tip of the iceberg. Kiyotaka is a man whose heart and whose mind are a vastness of space that frightens you sometimes, and it is only what lies at the very top that spills outward in the form of brash comments and half-formed observations. He believes in bold simplicity, after all. What he does not say is everything else, and you feel honored to have been allowed to hear some of it from time to time. He says things that make you reevaluate everything and everyone around you. He tells stories that make you weep, though never in front of him— not if you can help it, anyway, and sometimes you can't.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru is _alive_ , and he makes it painfully obvious that you had no idea what that meant until you met him. To watch him move, to watch as he squints at his notes and furiously scribbles on his paper, only confirms this.

At first, you admired him in a way you described as brotherly. You did not need his presence, but you craved it, and you were open about your affection for him and expressed this in slaps on the back and nearly-violent ruffles of his hair. He laughed a lot when you did these things, and that made you laugh, so you would do it again just to hear it whenever the opportunity presented itself.

His laugh is stupid, really, but you love it. It's like he learned to laugh by watching cartoons, because you can actually hear the sound of "ha ha ha!" and it's exaggerated and goofy, but you love it, you really do, and you want to hear it all the time.

Oddly enough, it was his laugh that made you realize you were falling for him.

You remember sitting outside at night, sitting on the roof of the school and looking out at the stars. That was probably almost six months ago now. You whistled a tune, and he remarked that he couldn't actually whistle, that no one had ever taught him. You laughed because you thought he was joking. Then he frowned at you, and you realized he was being serious.

You taught him how to whistle. You explained that you had to purse your lips like you were about to kiss someone, and his cheeks flushed at that for some reason, but he did as he was told. It took several explanations, but he was eventually able to produce a weak, warbled note.

You tested him. You whistled the first bars of that old western tune, the one that appears in every cowboy movie ever when the hero and villain face each other down and try to anticipate who will draw first and when. You left a space for him to finish the second half of the first bar, and he managed it, even though the notes came a bit too slowly and too quietly. You whistled your part, the same few notes, again, and he tried once more to complete the bar, but he faltered on the highest ending note and produced some kind of high-pitched screech that broke off into a puff of air.

At that he burst out laughing. It started as his usual elongated "ha ha ha!", but it quickly escalated, turning into something that sounded like hiccups or someone trying to catch their breath. He nearly fell forward with the force of it, and that made you laugh. And as you looked at him, so uncharacteristically exposed and casual, you felt your heart swell, and you didn't know what it was but you knew that it probably wasn't healthy.

As the weeks went by you noticed that sensation more and more, and eventually you ran out of excuses. You had fallen in love with him and there was nothing you could do about it.

You remember that starry night as vividly as anything else, like it had been only yesterday. Looking at Kiyotaka like this, when he's quiet and focused, you find yourself replaying a lot of memories. You find yourself remembering the first time he gave you _the look_ , the one that made your blood freeze and your mind race with _don't look at me like that, please never ever look at me like that_.

You had come home late from a nasty fight, your knuckles scraped and your eye bruised and your nose crooked and bloody. You went to his dorm, only because you knew he would still be awake wondering what had become of you and that he'd be glad, at least, to know you were alive. You'd prepared yourself for a scolding, for him to call you an idiot and reprimand you. You had not expected him to pull you into the dorm to treat your wounds, and to keep looking at you sadly with eyes full of concern. You asked him why he was so quiet, and he gave you _that look_ and said that you had let him down, that he had thought you could control your anger and avoid getting into any more brawls. And then he asked you to promise him to do better, to try harder, because he didn't want you to get hurt.

You hardly knew how to react to that.

Your entire life people had expected you to misbehave, had almost _encouraged it_ if only to satisfy their preconceived notions of people who looked and sounded like you. Not once had someone held you to a higher standard. Not once had someone said they thought you could do it— could be reformed, could end up somewhere other than a prison cell or a ditch on the side of the road.

And for the first time you felt like you had only been lazy, had only lived your life the way you had because it was the easy and expected route, had been too cowardly and too thick-headed to think of any other option. And for a split second, despite being a cynic, you felt like you could see it. Like you could see the person that Kiyotaka did, the man he felt was worthy of his friendship and respect.

Because, after all, if Kiyotaka liked you, you couldn't be all that bad, could you?

You think the main difference must be the way Kiyotaka frames it. When other people scold you, you get angry. You have always reacted poorly to criticism. When Kiyotaka does it it's different somehow, and you finally manage to put your finger on it: his criticism is not a condition you must meet to earn him.

Even when you fail him, he respects you. He cares about you when you've broken the law as much as he does when you're on your best behavior. His love is not something you have to earn, but he _does_ hope it motivates you to do better (which it does), and you have no words to describe how much you appreciate that and don't think that you would even if you had a hundred years to think about nothing else.

You don't know how he's done it, but Kiyotaka has made you begin to like yourself, if only because you make him happy.

Kiyotaka finishes his homework and slams his book shut. He catches your eyes on him and his expression changes to one of surprise. He asks you if you need help with something, if the algebra has been giving you trouble again, and you inwardly groan. It's like he goes out of his way to endear himself more to you, like he puts a conscious effort into being infuriatingly adorable.

What strikes you most at this moment is how completely normally he treats you. Kiyotaka is not afraid of you, and he never has been. Even before he liked you he did not fear you. Before Kiyotaka Ishimaru, you are another teenage boy. You are a man with dreams and feelings. You are his friend.

You are his _kyoudai_.

...Kiyotaka asks you why you're crying, and you don't have an answer just yet.

You know you can't keep lying to him, that someday you'll have to tell him the truth, that you'll have to lay your feelings bare and hope that he doesn't use it to destroy you. You know that he won't, but it's still scary to know that he _could_.

You pull him into a hug, and he wraps his arms around you gently, cooing into your ear that he's here for you and everything will be okay. You hope that he's right.

For now, until you are brave enough, you can rest comfortably in the knowledge that he loves you, even if it's not the same as the love you hold for him.

For now, it is enough, and you wonder what you did to deserve it.

**Author's Note:**

> My first completed Ishimondo and my first second-person piece! Started as a Drabble thing where I tried to explain my interpretation of Kiyotaka from Mondo's perspective and got a little out of control. I also used it as an excuse to tell the whistling story I imagined, though the first time I imagined it Mondo kinda lost control and gave Taka a kiss while his lips were still pursed. Now it's just the "how I realized I like you too much" story.


End file.
